


Charles in Wonderland

by pallorsomnium



Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, And suddenly there is plot?, Calm Down Erik, Charles Is a Darling, Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallorsomnium/pseuds/pallorsomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on palalife's XMFC/AIW comic strip. Charles is an average young man (really). He doesn't understand why he's been kidnapped by a teleporter (who looks like a bunny-eared devil) to...Wonderland? He <i>certainly</i> doesn't understand why Mad Hatter Shaw thinks <i>he</i> can kill the Red King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Enter Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

> So a while, while back, [palalife](http://palalife.tumblr.com/) posted [this awesome XMFC/AIW comic strip](http://palalife.tumblr.com/post/14303044416/the-strip-gets-too-long-so-i-have-to-cut-it), and I was hit by a plot bunny. I've gotten her approval to write a fic based on it, so here I go! :D
> 
> (I've never written crack before. It's an interesting experience, and plot seems to have hit me along the way, so progress will be slow because of that!) 
> 
> Beta'd by [the_beanster](http://the-beanster.livejournal.com/).

Charles Francis Xavier is an average young man (he’s not). He comes for a quite well-off family (a very, _very_ wealthy family) and is the son of one Brian Xavier, brilliant nuclear physicist, and Sharon Xavier, former socialite. Unfortunately, Brian Xavier gave his life to his work, and Sharon Xavier eventually gave her life to the bottle (while pretending she didn’t have a son, which wasn’t hard in a house the size of a small castle). Personally, Charles thinks he turned out just fine being raised by the staff, bless their souls.

Charles spent his formative years in New York, away from the war. Then, he studied at Oxford (like his father, and his father before him, and his father before him). Charles is a very intelligent man and graduated without difficulty (in other words, top of his class, a PhD in genetics and psychology).

He has just returned from England, settling himself back in at Westchester. He realized upon arriving that he’d forgotten to call the servants back, but the house is still cleaned weekly—dust-free and habitable. He has no problem waiting a few days for the staff to return.

Today, Charles is sitting in the garden with a book to read and a cup of tea on the table at his elbow. It’s a lovely day outside (clear skies, warm and sunny, a gentle wind blowing), and he expects a full day of utter peace and quiet.

So he is understandably surprised when a cloud of red smoke bursts into existence before him with a poof.  

When the smoke clears, there’s a man standing before him with red skin, a _tail_ and slicked-back black hair, dressed in black slacks and a black mandarin-collared suit jacket and, incongruously, a pair of fluffy white bunny ears.

“You are Charles, yes?” the man (with _bunny ears_ ) asks, his accent surprisingly Russian.

“Yes. Who are—”

“Come with me, then, comrade.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

The man places a hand on his shoulder and—

 

—and Charles blinks and finds himself standing in a walled garden, red smoke dispelling around him.

There’s a long table in front of him, weighed down by countless tea cups and tea pots and surrounded by at least twenty chairs. At the very head sits an impeccably dressed man (though the thick, black fur longcoat seems a little too much for the current weather) with pepper grey and brown hair and cold grey eyes. His smile didn’t reach his eyes, and his very presence makes the back of Charles’ neck prickle.

“Ah, there you are. Welcome back to Wonderland, Mr. Xavier,” the man greets him.

“Charles, please,” he replies automatically. He then asks, “Welcome back? I don’t think I’ve been here before…”

“Oh you have. You were but a child then,” the man says. “I’m Sebastian Shaw.”

Charles squints at him, trying to match the man’s face with his memories. Then he realizes that he’s seen this man before, in his childhood dreams. Does that mean he’s fallen asleep in the garden?

Regardless, Charles remarks, “Didn’t you used to have a helmet?”

“That’s right,” Sebastian says, smile widening. (Charles resists the urge to shudder or to turn tail and run. He remembers now that the man had been called the Mad Hatter.) “Please, sit and have some tea.”

“No, I’m all right.” Even the prospect of tea doesn’t make the prospect of sitting next to Sebastian any less unpleasant. “I would like to know, why exactly have I been…” ( _Kidnapped_ , his mind provides for him cheerfully.) “…brought here to, er, Wonderland?”

“Not one for idle chatter, then?” Sebastian teased.

“Not at the moment, no.”

“Well then, Charles, _we_ need _you_ to kill the Red King.”

Charles immediately holds up a hand, cutting him off.

“No, thank you. I have no interest in killing anyone.”

“Oh, but you see, the evil Red King has taken my helmet, and has been terrorizing all of Wonderland ever since.”

“I’m sorry, but I have serious doubts as to how I could possibly help. Again, I am not killing anyone.”

Sebastian sighs. (The sigh sounds very melodramatic and fake and does nothing to put Charles at ease.)

“Very well then. Azazel would send you back to your world now, but teleporting between worlds is quite taxing. It will be at least a day before he can take you back.”

Charles briefly wonders if Sebastian is simply lying to keep Charles from leaving. (He is, though Charles didn’t know that.) He then shrugs off the notion; it didn’t help him return home, after all.

“All right. Then I suppose I’d like to do some exploring.”

“Good, good, there’s a door out that way,” Sebastian says, gesturing behind Charles to the left.

“Ah, thank you. Until next time then,” Charles says (though he hopes that there will never be a next time).


	2. Charlie's Best Friend

The door leading out of the walled garden takes Charles to a winding dirt path through a curious forest. (Curious, because the trees aren’t necessarily green, the bushes remind him of overgrown, shaggy puppies, and the flowers look like they have faces.)

There is only one direction to go, so he follows the dirt path into the forest, eyeing everything around him with both interest and wariness.

Unfortunately, ten minutes of walking later, the path splits in two, and the signs at the junction point everywhere _but_ left or right.

Charles sighs. He is slowly recalling the Wonderland he used to dream about as a lonely child with only the maid to cry out for. He’s forgotten just how little sense the place made.

He looks down the left branch of the path and then the right branch. The left looks dark and gloomy, while the right looks sunny and cheery. Any person with survival instincts would go to the right. But this is Wonderland so perhaps he should be going to the left.

Thus decided, he starts towards the left path, manfully ignoring the doom and gloom of the forest down that path.

“Not going to say hello, _Charlie_?” a voice calls to him, making him jump and spin back around.

What he’d assumed to be a white marble statue of a naked lady _moves_ , stepping off its pedestal.

“I’m sorry, do I—?”

The statue ripples with blue, and with the clacking one might hear when hitting two bamboo sticks together, the woman turns scaly blue, with short, red hair and bright, yellow eyes.

“ _Raven!_ ” Charles exclaims.

The very naked young lady is, in fact, his childhood imaginary best friend. There’s no way he’d ever forget her beautiful blue skin and her ability to change forms, though now he can’t decide if she—and Wonderland—is imaginary or actually _real_. (Either way, Charles pointedly keeps his eyes to her shoulders and above.)

“Charles,” the woman says with a smile, pulling him into a hug. “Welcome back. It’s been so long.”

“Too long,” Charles agrees before letting her go.

“I thought you were never coming back. What are you doing here?” she asks.

“I believe I was kidnapped by a red man with bunny ears. I met Mr. Shaw; apparently, he wants me to kill the Red King,” Charles replies with a grimace.

Raven blanches, face turning an interesting shade of dark periwinkle blue, and she clasps his hands in hers.

“Don’t, please don’t. How the king is acting now—it’s not his fault, I swear.”

“Raven, what on _earth_ are you talking about?” Charles asks.

“It’s that silly helmet. Ever since he put it on five years ago, the Red King hasn’t been the same.  The helmet turned him evil.”

“The _helmet_ turned him evil?” Charles repeats.

“It _was_ made by Shaw, after all. I haven’t seen the Red King in ages; that helmet gives me the heebie-jeebies,” Raven says with a shudder.

“Ah. That’s…well, what _has_ the Red King been like?” he asks.

“Awful. I mean, sure he was a bit of megalomaniac, but not like _now_. He’s let everything outside the Red Castle either go wild or regulate the area so harshly that there isn’t anything available for the living. He plays favorites, too,” Raven huffs. “You know how most of the people here have powers? Like I can shapeshift and Azazel can teleport?” Charles nods along. “Well, the better powers you have, the more obvious that you have power, the more he favors you. It’s ridiculous.”

“Oh dear. And there’s no one to stop him?”

“Believe me, we’ve tried. Even _Shaw_ couldn’t get close enough. And the White Queen doesn’t want to interfere, not if it means helping Shaw snatch up the throne.”

“The White Queen?”

“You don’t remember? There’s always a Red King and a White Queen. The Red King rules the lands we’re in right now, and the White Queen rules the lands up this road to the north. She and Shaw used to have a thing, but then he went a little loony— _more_ loony.”

Charles frowns. “I’m not quite sure if I’m remembering a dream or something that actually happened.” Then he brushes his concern at his sanity aside to ask, “If those with powers have tried and failed to stop the Red King, why on _earth_ does Mr. Shaw think _I_ will manage it?”

Raven shrugs. “Because you’re different? You’re not from here, of course, and Shaw wouldn’t get in trouble if you failed?”

“Surely not.”

“Oh yes. Shaw isn’t someone you can trust or be friendly with.” Then Raven looks around warily. “The king keeps tabs on Shaw, so by now, he probably knows you’re here. I think now’s a good time to get a move on.”

“Move on _where_?”

“To the White Queen. Better her than the Red King,” Raven replies. She grabs his hand and starts pulling him along down the path he’d been about to follow.

“Is it really necessary? There’s no way for the king to be, be _reasoned_ with?”

“We tried that, tried and failed. The helmet turned him evil, remember? So, _you_ talk to the Queen. She’s a telepath; she’ll know best—if she’ll tell you.”

“Haven’t you tried to talk to her as well?” Charles asks, though he keeps pace with Raven without protest.

“Yes, but you’re _Charles_. Everyone likes you. There’s a better chance with you than anyone else,” Raven says.

Charles frowns, because he knows for a fact not everyone likes him. (One Cain Marko, his secondary school designated bully, comes to mind. Thank _god,_ he hasn’t seen him in years. The chap was a very disturbed man.)

He opens his mouth to say so.

Then all thoughts are forgotten as the colorful trees and puppy-bushes and flowers-with-faces disappear, and he and Raven stand looking out over endless white upon white.


End file.
